Team Obama’s character assassination to combat supposed character assassination

posted at 10:40 am on August 28, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

“Slimy.” “Smear merchant.” “Character assassin.” This kind of name-calling tends to undermine an argument against character assassination, especially when the argument comes with no supporting evidence at all. Yet the Barack Obama campaign feels comfortable with this kind of ad hominem attack on Stanley Kurtz as a means to get him silenced:

The campaign e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action Wire with detailed instructions including the station’s telephone number and the show’s extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which seems to prove that he’s a conservative, which isn’t in dispute. The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in Scandinavia.

“Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse,” says the email, which picks up a form of pressure on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz’s lies,” it continues.

So let’s get this straight. Team Obama calls Kurtz all of these names, and it’s Kurtz who’s the character assassin? For the second straight time on this topic, Team Obama has delivered a hysterical, shrieking offensive on a topic they’d be better off ignoring. Earlier this week, they demanded a criminal prosecution against a critic of The One for pointing out his association with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. Now they’ve attacked Kurtz through an organized campaign of character assassination.

Team Obama has become so overwrought at the mere thought of criticism that they now overreact on a constant basis. It’s a measure of the fear in the campaign that they have decided that they cannot abide any criticism at all, and instead of simply responding to it, they attempt to silence it instead. Worse, they seem to believe that the Department of Justice is a great tool for oppressing such criticism — while Democrats accuse the Bush administration of the same, which much less evidence for their allegations.

And in this case, what has Kurtz done? He has demanded access to records that should have been public all along to investigate the workings of a program funded at least in part by public funds. Kurtz wanted to check the records on Obama’s denials of a close working relationship with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers. In other words, Kurtz attempted to commit the crime of journalism, a crime that seems rare enough as it is when it comes to Obama and his past.

Maybe other journalists should take heed. If Obama becomes president and they commit the crime of Journalism in the First Degree, how will these same people react with the full weight of the federal government behind them? If they stoop to character assassination now, what will they do when they have much more powerful tools at their disposal?

Update: As Ed Driscoll notes, Team Obama calls Kurtz a lot of names, while he has defended Ayers as “mainstream” on his website and in comments. Which deserves more calumny — a reporter or a terrorist?

Update II: Michelle has a good round-up and adds her own thoughts to the hypocrisy of this pre-emptive attack on Kurtz.

The experience was surreal, amusing, and chilling. In a matter of hours, a major national campaign had called on its legions to bully a radio show out of airing an interview with a legitimate scholar asking legitimate political questions. Coupled with the Obama campaign’s recent attempts to sic the DOJ on the creators of a truthful political advertisement —which also happened to feature Obama’s relationship with an unrepentant terrorist— last night’s call to action represents an emerging pattern. Any criticism of Obama’s unknown past is to be immediately denounced as a “smear,” and the messenger is to be shut down at all costs. …

Team Obama is fast becoming the campaign that cried “smear.” They labeled the National Right to Life committee “liars” for providing evidence of some unpleasant facts about their candidate’s record on a series of infanticide votes. This tendency to lash out and engage in baseless name-calling not only smacks of desperation; it also may foreshadow an Obama presidency’s strategy in handling unfavorable media reports and sources.

In other words, they’re becoming whiny wimps. Just what we need in a President.

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Nothing new here actually..this si how the far-left debates..over the top name calling..FACTS?..screw ‘em who needs facts when you can just act like a three year old and use vicious name calling?..these are the people whi compare all Republicans to nazis..they draw swastikas on stars of david.

What’s also high on the unintentional comedy scale if you look at the Obama email is that the first thing they throw at Stanley Kurtz to attempt to deligitimize him is that he served on some board with Bill Kristol. So….it’s a problem when a conservative journalist serves on a board with another conservative journalist — but it’s NOT a problem when Barack Obama serves on two boards with an unrepentant terrorist! ooookay.

My only comfort is Joe Biden’s commitment to fight abuse of power /sarc

I believe jim m is correct in that what Obama is doing is NOT illegal. It is despicable though – and as Ed points out – the more disturbing part of this is what Obama would do once he was president to stifle speech (in the cause of defending truth of course).

Besides jim m – if Republicans are guilty of the same thing what does this say about the ‘New Politics’ of The One?

I’m curious–how are leftists responding to this? I know the Obama sheep don’t care, but is anyone who is so-called progressive and always bleating about free speech saying anything of “Wait a second here… I thought we opposed this stuff?”

Or is it the usual–if a Dem does it, it is right?

I guess what I’m wondering is whether Obama would face any criticism in his own party for this. After all, demonizing Republicans is easy, and those evil Bushitler types need jailing anyway, but is anyone on their side at all concerned?

leftists love it. Old time liberals are growing somewhat alarmed by the tactics. It probably helps us greatly that Obama and his camp played the race card on Bill Clinton. Now liberals are willing to listen to us when Obama’s campaign does this crap to McCain and conservatives.

volokh link to a democrat’s take on some Obama stuff if you scroll down

I’d counter that what Rush encouraged was for Republicans to exercise their right to vote, not to try and squelch anyone else’s. Besides, it’s a little different when the name-calling and incitement come directly from the campaign in lieu of providing its own spokesperson to carry its own water.

This is far worse than anything done on the right and actually reminds me of when Pres Clinton perversely tried to blame right-wing radio for the Oklahoma City bombing so he could win his election. They’re trying to take the terrorist focus off of the actual terrorist and put it on “dangerous right-wing radio.”

It’s some crazy shit being pulled just to keep quiet whatever Obama and Ayers were up to together. There has to be more to this story than just the 60′s when Barry was a baby. Follow the money.

This is really nothing new. The Clintons did the same type of things for years. With the media’s help it can be really effective in hiding the truth. The messiah campaign is just absorbing all their cronies.

This was Obama’s “Night of the Long Knives”. And it’s going to wind up crushing him with independents and libertarians. Stanley is no “conservative Alex Jones.” Any one who has read Kurtz work knows he will come across to the rest of America as an even keel, affable, well spoken, conservative scholar who researches the hell out of everything before he speaks/writes. The last thing Obama’s campaign can take is Kurtz on national drive-time radio or FoxNews discussing last nights interview, complete with audio clips from that podcast. So when you think about it, last night was teh awesome.

What it says is that the Democrats are doing the same things that Karl Rove, Rush and others have been doing for awhile.

jim m on August 28, 2008 at 12:24 PM

Diversionary Propaganda. When you can’t defend your party’s conduct go on the attack. Make unsubstantiated accusations to confuse the issue…”Oh yeah, well you did it too.” What a pathetic attempt to justify an egregious action.

This was a fundamentally stupid miscalculation by the Obama campaign for any number of reasons. WGN Radio (and TV) is a Chicago institution. It is the farthest thing from second-tier conservative talk radio. Milt Rosenberg is probably the most cerebral and well-regarded “talk show host” in the country. He is emphatically not a red meat talk radio host like, say, Mike Gallagher. WGN is owned by Tribune Media, which also owns the Chicago Tribune and LA Times. Clearly not conservative niche press. Small wonder (as Ed noted) that both papers picked up the story. The Obama campaign may think it’s the 800 lb gorilla when it goes after relatively small-fry players like AIP. But it just fired an artillery barrage at a cornerstone of the mainstream media. Dumb on stilts.

Obama and his minions are simply following the Saul Alinsky rules for warefare:

“Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear and retreat.”

“Make the enemy live up to his/her own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

“The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.”

“In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt.”

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.” (Think Gingrich, Lott and the success of name-calling used by the likes of Bill Clinton, Paul Begala, James Carville, Maxine Waters and others against conservatives and Republicans. Think of how Clinton “enemies” like Paula Jones or Linda Tripp were treated.)

“One of the criteria for picking the target is the target’s vulnerability … the other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract.” (Trent Lott comes to mind. Meanwhile, a former Klansman by the name of Sen. Robert Byrd got away with saying “nigger” on Fox News at least three times, and he still maintains his Senate seat and power.)

“The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.” For instance, Democrats imply conservatives are racists or that Republicans want to kill senior citizens by limiting the growth of the Medicare system, they imply Republicans want to deny kids lunch money without offering real proof. These red-herring tactics work.

Time for conservatives to learn to play hardball before it’s too late.

Sometimes I wonder if there is more to the Ayers story than just another example of Obama sucking up to lefty scumbags because they will help him succeed. Here you have a sycophantic politician sucking up to admitted terrorist/marxist/trust fund baby Ayers, serving on a board doling out huge amounts of money to fellow-travelers, operating under a completely utilitarian philosophy (leftism), within the milieu of Chicago politics.

Maybe what fear is NOT that Ayers and Obama were butt-buddies but a final audit of the foundation.

Then again, maybe Obamas campaign managers are just as thin-skinned, amateurish, and juvenile as their candidate. Given the guideline “never assume malice when simple incompetence will do”, the second argument is more likely. Either way, Obama is definitely in a box with this one now.

Extension 720 Unabridged – 720 WGN – 8-27-08
Listen Now! (mp3) Milt talks with Stanley Kurtz,a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributor to National Review, about what he’s found in the newly opened Annenberg Challenge archives at the UIC Library.

In early December 1999, George W. Bush’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove, and Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater squared off in the Manchester, New Hampshire, airport. Rove was angry over a story Slater had written suggesting that it was plausible that Rove was behind the whisper campaign that warned that Senator John McCain–then soaring in the GOP presidential primary polls–might any day unravel, because he had been under so much pressure when he was tortured as a POW in Vietnam.

In a 700-word article that Slater said wasn’t the most significant thing he’d written about Rove, he referred to questionable campaign tactics attributed to Rove: teaching College Republicans dirty tricks; spreading a rumor that former Governor Ann Richards was too tolerant of gays and lesbians; circulating a mock newspaper that featured a story about a former Democratic governor’s drinking and driving when he was a college student; spreading stories about Jim Hightower’s alleged role in a contribution kickback scheme; and alerting the press to the fact that Lena Guerrero, a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party, had lied about graduating from college. Rove was explicitly linked by testimony and press reports to all but the gay and lesbian story; the college incident had been so widely reported for 15 years that it was essentially part of the common domain. Slater also reported that primary candidates Steve Forbes and Gary Bauer blamed the Bush camp for the smear campaign.

“He said I had harmed his reputation,” Slater recalls. Says another reporter who was traveling with Bush, “It was pretty heated. They were nose to nose. Rove was furious and had his finger in Slater’s chest.” Adds the same reporter, “What was interesting then is that everyone on the campaign charter concluded that Rove was responsible for rumors about McCain.”

That Karl Rove, who according to the White House press office is not giving interviews, hasn’t always abided by the Marquess of Queensbury rules of political engagement is not exactly breaking news. As long ago as 1989, when Rove collaborated with an FBI agent investigating Hightower, the then-Texas agriculture commissioner complained about Rove’s “Nixonian dirty tricks.”

Former U.S. attorney-general Ramsey Clark met with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein last Sunday. He wrote this commentary exclusively for the Toronto Star.

Should a free person be afraid to meet with a demonized “brutal dictator”?

If not, how do we hope to learn, understand, act to avoid violence and war? If our (U.S.) government says, “You will only be deceived and used, a dupe, if you meet,” doesn’t this reveal an intention to exercise arbitrary control over information on which public opinion is formed that might affect government plans?

Why did the White House object to the interview with President Saddam Hussein by Dan Rather, seek to interject rebuttal and rebuke at different points in the interview, and then complain that a person who lies should not be allowed to speak in the media?

Your go-to guy for paranoid complaints about intimidation and an infringement of free speech is Ramsey Clark? RU serious?

Rushing to Saddam’s side after the war was par for Clark’s course. He’s defended a star-studded roster of mass-murderers: Serbian tyrant Milosevic, former Milosevic henchman Radovan Karadzic, a Rwandan pastor accused of orchestrating the slaughter of thousands of Tutsis, al Qaeda terrorist Mohamed Al-Owhali, as well as Nazi war criminals Karl Linnas and Jack Riemer.

jim m, you blockhead. We were at war with Saddam Hussein, though a temporary truce was in place. And to cite Ramsey Clark is beneath contempt.

Finally, tho I know this will come a shock–Saddam Hussein was not a citizen of the USA. Nor was he residing in the USA (legally or illegally). So USA free speech issues don’t really concern him. And plenty of people were more than happy to talk about/defend him here at home without being threatened legally.

c’mon! Are you the best that the Obamanation has to offer? Isn’t there anyone who supports Obama’s contemptible attempts to stifle dissent with a little more to offer than this blockhead???

And the right of free speech only applies to acts of the Government. There are no US Constitutional issues involved in this situation.

No, we remained at war with Iraq throughout the 90′s. There was only a truce and a cessation of hostilities. Not any declaration of peace until Hussein was deposed. Even as a hostile foreign nation (accomplices in the ’93 bombing, attempting to assassinate Bush ’41, shooting at our planes, etc., etc.) the Executive Branch has the responsibility and the right to control access to that nation and its leaders.

Scooter Libby? What does Libby have to do with this thread?

When Team Barry attempts to use the power of the Justice Department to stifle free speech that involves the power of the government. And the actions of Team Barry with regard to Kurtz are a chilling harbinger of what kind of government we can expect from Team Barry.

it wasn’t a declaration of war. It was specifically authorization for use of military force against Iraq. Since we were technically still at war with Iraq from Desert Storm days (and still using military force against Iraq throughout the years of sanctions), the authorization was effectively a green light for major military action.